From: | Terry Amburgey <xanth@****.UKY.EDU> |
---|---|
Subject: | collaborative gaming |
Date: | Wed, 23 Aug 1995 12:06:37 -0400 |
>
>All right, Terry, then what I think would be good to see from you would
>be a nice description of how these wonderful games of yours went. I think
>everyone who's disagreed with you has brought up some good points and some
>potential problems that would be faced when playing a system where the players
>have as much control as the GM over the world. How did you handle these in
>your game? What kinds of things happened? What were some of the characters
>like? How, exactly, did these things run? Was everything pre-written and no-one
>ever "cheated", and if the climatic battle was over in the first five
minutes
>of the game, then so be it? How about a short sample of a scene, with the parts
>"done" by both players and GM's marked? I'm actually interested.
>
I'll use the fourth campaign I played in as an example. It was AD&D, right
at the time the Greyhawk Boxed set came out from TSR. 6 people; at the
beginning, 3 experienced gamers and 3 novices to rpgs. We decided to use the
greyhawk materials for a common world, to rotate dm duties among the 3
experienced people while the novices got a feel for gaming. When the novices
felt ready, they got their feet wet using published modules. The initial 3
dm's did their own stuff most of the time. The 3 experienced gamers agreed
to stick to published rules and jointly decide how to handle situations not
covered in the published rules. The 3 novices weren't really sure what we
were talking about but liked the notion of using the rules in the books
they'd purchased. We also decided to use the rules/guidelines for awarding
treasure and experience points.
Everyone created 3 characters [over 2 nights as I recall] using the same
rules for generation. We decided that, to ease introductions, everyone
[regardless of origins] lived in the city of greyhawk. The first 2 or 3
adventures were low level urban things just to give the pc's a chance to get
to know each other, or at least know someone who knew someone else. Then
there was a 'pool' of player characters who could get together to form a
party for a given adventure.
The referee for a given adventure would 'out of game' let everyone know if
there were any 'special requirements' to keep in mind for an adventure -
"Might want to have a druid or a ranger in the party, they come in handy
outdoors". If the players decided to bag the druid/ranger so that a paladin
could get the experience points needed to go up a level, they got to live
with the consequences.
What sort of problems did we have? Disparity in 'length' among adventures.
Some would take 2 sessions, another would take 4. This led to imbalances in
'workload' and playing time. Differences in 'style'. I for example like
'hardball' games with high adrenaline levels, others like lighthearted,
games with more grins than grimaces. We had 'alignment' problems [lawful
good vs neutral evil] but I've seen that in every game with alignments. Once
characters started reaching 'name' level we had some problems with the
mechanics of party construction [We need Fred Fighter but his stronghold is
on the other side of Furyondy, how do we get him here fast?].
We didn't have cheating. We didn't have dice fudging [I have a long list of
characters with cause of death=stupidity and a shorter list of characters
with cause of deathºd dice rolls]. We didn't have problems of player
knowledge/character knowledge [sure I know where the grandfather of
assassins lives, that is irrelevant to the fire giants I'm fighting now that
Doug is the referee]. We did not have 'house rule' problems. When something
came up we took a short break decided what we thought should happen & that
was it. And I mean a short break; I can't recall any time we had any serious
disagreements. The fact that everyone had to live with all the house rules
as both player and referee eased things considerably.
Maybe I'm more obtuse than I realize, but I fail to see the problems. Is
this approach to gaming really that bizarre? Apparently some believe that
without a 'strong' gm to control the game it will just disolve into chaos. I
guess I just have a divergent view on authoritarian versus collaborative gaming.
I've tried to give a semi-concrete example of MY preferences. Could you
explain to me where it won't work and why your preferences work better?
Terry L. Amburgey Office: 606-257-7726
Associate Professor Home: 606-224-0636
College of Business & Economics Fax: 606-257-3577
University of Kentucky
Lexington, KY 40506